WE WON'T BE LEAVING BY THE SAME WAY THAT WE CAME

In We won't be leaving by the same way that we came, Rich Spencer presents a narrative-driven collection of poetry grounded in memory, inheritance, and the strange beauty hiding inside of ordinary days. These poems trace the emotional geography of family - fathers and sons, lost children, aging parents, marriage, and the long legacy of generational grief. Unfolding in hospital rooms, empty highways, late-night kitchen conversations, and childhood memory, Spencer s work inhabits the intimate spaces where love and loss converge. His voice is direct yet meditative, blending storytelling with lyric reflection to examine faith, doubt, endurance, and the search for meaning across the arc of midlife. At once personal and communal, this collection considers how we carry what came before us and how the act of remembering reshapes the road ahead. It is a work attentive to the fragile intersections of tenderness, anger, humor, and grace. Poetry that resists abstraction in favor of lived experience, We won t be leaving by the same way that we came invites readers into an unflinching meditation on survival, belonging, and the quiet labor of becoming.